Ordinary Gweilo

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The SIMs

There has been a lot of fuss in Europe about the cost of mobile phone roaming. Some poor unfortunates have taken their phones to Spain on holiday and come back to find that their mobile phone bills cost more than the holiday.  The catch being that whilst there are no charges for incoming calls when you are in the UK, they cost an arm and leg when you go overseas. 

Now the European Commission has threatened to cap the cost of roaming.  This has been met with predictable complaints from the phone companies about "interfering with the free market".  However they have also decided that perhaps they should reduce their charges. 

I suppose we have a similar situation with Hong Kong and China, but here the problem really has been solved by the market.  Rather than paying roaming charges, you can subscribe to a "Call Forward Roaming" service that will divert your calls to a China mobile number.  Of course they charge for this service, but much less than the mobile phone companies.

The only problem with this arrangement is that you either need to have two phones, or you have to do the "Lo Wu shuffle" and take out your Hong Kong SIM card and replace it with the China SIM card (and then do the reverse on the way home).  I can’t imagine why Nokia or Motorola haven’t come up with a phone that can use 2 SIM cards, but I suppose it will happen one day.  That or at least a phone which allows you to take out the SIM card without taking the phone apart…

As an aside, in my latest in a long line of weird conversations with Hong Kong companies, I called one company advertising "Call Forward Roaming" and asked them about the HK$8/month plan that I had found on their website.

"Sorry sir, that offer is not available any more." 

At this point I would expect them to tell me their latest offer, but I had to ask.  I was expecting bad news.  Not so – they now charge HK$20 per year.  So why didn’t he tell me that straight away rather than apologizing?  Still at least I did manage to get the information – the first time I called they told me to try another (wrong) number, and the second time they promised to call me back but never did so.  It really is a struggle sometimes.   

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3 responses to “The SIMs”

  1. spacehunt avatar
    spacehunt

    I can’t imagine why Nokia or Motorola haven’t come up with a phone that can use 2 SIM cards, but I suppose it will happen one day.

    This has been solved by the market as well. There are “Super SIM” cards that allows several SIMs to be ‘loaded’ onto the same card, which then enables switching between accounts with a phone reboot.
    But it still doesn’t let me use both SIMs simultaneously, so I’m now carrying two phones while I head up North…

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  2. Richard avatar
    Richard

    There have been replacement dual-SIM thingies for various phones available for years, which tend to work by having you reboot the phone and hold down a particular key for SIM 1 or SIM 2 while booting, or some such thing. I think the main problem is that you can’t really have two connections at once on the same frequency, and you’d have to have two radios to use two frequencies at once, so you can’t be on both networks at the same time – also, they are having enough trouble getting wifi and GSM working in one device because of radio problems, I think, that having it be on two networks with two frequencies would be nigh-on impossible.
    At one point last year, I was walking around with a UK SIM, an Israeli SIM, and a Sri Lankan SIM in my wallet – all active – and an HK one in my phone…

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  3. Chris avatar
    Chris

    What I meant was that it should be possible to install two SIM cards and switch between them, not to have both working at the same time.
    Switching SIM cards means that you risk losing or damaging them, so that “Super SIM” thing looks to be just the job!

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